


Your Illusion

by luckystars921



Category: Jonas Brothers
Genre: Death, Drama, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Mental Health Issues, Slow Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:41:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24512506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luckystars921/pseuds/luckystars921
Summary: After the band split in 2013 Joseph Jonas did the exact opposite of what everyone expected of him.He disappeared from the public eye; but, he had a plan for the best way to eventually reemerge.He would show the world – this time – that he was more than “just” a Jonas Brother.Along the way Joe met Annabeth Charles.Abigail Nolan never really had a plan of her own. Rather her parents had one for her.If they were ever around she might have been happier to follow it; rather than letting it almost completely break her.She finally vowed she would show her parents she was more than what they decided.On the cusp of adulthood Abbie met Jason Altman.Losing the love of your life is a pain that can never be truly quantified.Meeting someone who understands what you are going through is incomprehensible.Potentially falling in love again is inconceivable.But, learning to heal – to let go of illusions of what was and what might have been – is the hardest thing of all.
Relationships: Joe Jonas/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	1. Chapter One: The Bronxville House

**Author's Note:**

> So this one is going to be heavy.  
> This takes place in a VERY different world. I've had this story since back in 2009 - but having watched Chasing Happiness and them having shown us the tension that had been going on behind the scenes at that point? I got to wondering - what if they couldn't fix things. What if things had gone differently?   
> It's essentially the butterfly effect - one single change can set off an entire ripple effect. So what was originally an unfinished - kinda dramatic piece with some humor - has become an actual examination of the process of grieving and moving on and what that entails (and not just moving on from death either).

_**"Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can;**  
 **and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys."**  
(Alphonse de Lamartine)_

* * *

_Wednesday, March 10, 2021_  
  
The pitch black of the empty room was only broken by a dying fire that cast flickering shadows around onto the mahogany walls - illuminating a sparkle in the air as though starlight had made its way into the room.  
  
The light from the flames hit the edges of gilded picture frames; just barely illuminating the subjects held within. Floor to ceiling bookshelves, packed to the brim ran the entire length of two walls of the room. Plush rugs covered solid wood flooring and beautiful, comfortable, furniture decorated the entirety of the room. And finally, proudly displayed, surrounding the mantle were large frames filled with plaques declaring gold and platinum records – multiple times over.  
  
To a casual observer the room was the dream version of a private library.  
  
Joe Jonas walked slowly into his study carrying a folder. Crossing the room with a determined gait he stopped in front of the fireplace and stared at the orange flames that licked at his feet. He flipped the folder open once more and glared down at the pages it held; before, tossing them into the fire with an exhalation that was more exhaustion then anger.  
  
"Another rejection," he whispered to himself watching the flames begin to come back to life as they ate away at the last six months of his life.  
  
Backing away slowly Joe watched as the pages that contained the story, music and lyrics to what he had thought would be his ticket back to some semblance of a life burned to ash and found he couldn’t quite care as much as he knew he should.

When his legs hit an armchair Joe sank into the reassuringly well-worn green velour and exhaled completely. Taking a second to rub his exhausted and burning eyes he desperately willed the tears away. He forcibly took a few deep breaths, counting internally as he did.

It didn’t matter.

As the last of the pages burned away, he couldn’t help but glance to the side table. Sitting next to him on that table was a single photograph – a beautiful blonde woman was captured there. Dressed casually standing on the Brooklyn Bridge, with the Manhattan skyline in the background she was smiling and waving her left hand at the photographer – looking closer would show a stunning, but simple, diamond ring on that same hand.  
  
Seeing her face smiling back at him Joe couldn’t suppress it any longer and the first exhausted, pain-filled sob, filled the room for the countless night in a row.

* * *

  
Joe groaned, covering his face to block out whatever light had managed to get past the heavy curtains he pulled shut almost a year earlier, the next morning. Pushing his aching body out of the chair he had fallen asleep in his gaze once more fell to the single photograph he hadn’t packed away in a fit of rage months earlier.

“I miss you,” he mumbled, picking up the picture – the one perfectly maintained, well cleaned, object in the room. He stared at it sadly, feeling the burn in his throat begin again before forcibly pushing it down. “Not during the day,” he hissed at himself, out loud. Meticulously Joe set the picture back down in the exact spot it had been in, almost as though to not disturb the dust that had settled on the table it sat on.  
  
The room he stood in looked far different at this hour of the morning. The imperfections were now brought to startling clarity from the minimal sunlight that barely managed to breach the walls through tall east facing windows.  
  
The air which in the dark of night and firelight seemed to sparkle – was now revealed to be filled with dust particles that floated around the room. The gilded frames lining the walls were filled with impersonal art photography. The stuffed bookshelves – were more cluttered then lovingly filled - and half were on the floor in stacks as if someone had frantically been looking for something without care.  
  
Any flat surface around the room was coated with a thick layer of dust that implied no one had cleaned or disturbed parts of the room in a significant length of time.

Most telling of the truth of that room were those same, once proudly displayed, gold and platinum records. The glass of every display had been cracked – like something had been thrown at them hard enough to do damage without fully breaking.  
  
Shaking his head, forcing his eyes away from the photo, Joe turned and left their one-time study closing and locking the door firmly behind him. He entered the main hall of his once pristine home and strolled past the adjoining living room, again ignoring the clutter and lack of cleanliness throughout, heading towards the kitchen on the other side of the large Georgian Colonial home.  
  
As he poured himself a cup of coffee, grateful that he remembered the set the timer the night before, he looked out the large kitchen windows and over the huge backyard thoughtfully. He had purchased the six bedroom home, sitting on nearly two acres of fenced in land, in Bronxville, New York almost exactly four years earlier and, at the time, Joe had expected by now to have filled it with the sound of at least one child.  
  
But that was a fantasy from before.

The purchase of the home was supposed to be the beginning of his life with Annie. They were young, beautiful, smart and (as a result of all his specific 'before') wealthy. They were both going to have careers and get married and fill the house laughter and with children.

Instead since the day he had purchased this home – until eight months earlier, the week of his 30th birthday – he had been thrown back into a constant state of 'before.'   
  
Constantly being asked about 'before' and told 'remember when' stories from people he barely knew.  
  
Which after four years of never hearing about it was a bit of a shock to his system.  
  
Ironically, he had expected the opposite to be true. He had expected those first four years to be filled with reminders and attempts to get him back into being Joe Jonas of the Jonas Brothers. Instead, he found he was able to live his life – disappear into the life of a college student in Manhattan. There was no doubt his classmates recognized him; but no one brought it up. Friends he made eventually told him that was because they respected him for putting the work in. For jumping down into the trenches of a classroom to truly learn a craft.

Following graduation and an attempt to re-build his career anew? Suddenly all anyone could see was the kid who ran around singing in a summer camp on the Disney Channel just under a decade earlier.  
  
Joe trudged up the stairs off the main hall slowly with his hand trailing along the long wooden railing that Annie had both adored and feared.

_"Joey...we're going to have to pad it. Your offspring are going to break their necks sliding down it."  
  
"Oh...so when they're bad they're mine and when they're good they're yours?"_

_"Obviously," she had shot back with a wink.  
  
"Well, let's just say these mysterious offspring do decide to take a trip down the bannister. What exactly are you going to do then?"_

_"...go next?"_  
  
Before was everything prior to October of 2013. Before was when his life was supposed to be prefect. Before was before his younger brother took a sledgehammer to everything Joe thought he knew to be true about his own life.

He didn’t want to go back to before.

However, since August? Everything that followed that one humid August day was a numb, barely remembered, only occasionally coherent state of 'After'.

Before was still the past June when Annie had grown tired of his excuses, his fears and his insecurities. Before she got tired of waiting for his insistence on establishing himself for them to get married. Before she got tired of teaching all-day through a computer and coming out of her small downstairs office to a shell of the man she was engaged to. Before they didn’t have anyone to see other then themselves for a four-month time frame. Before was when Annie insisted, she need to go see her parents – that they needed to take some time away from each other. Before was still when Annie called him weekly all summer. Before was as they rebuilt their relationship. Before was when she told him she was coming home on the thirteenth of August.

_“Just in time for your birthday baby. Like I’m gonna miss the big three-oh.”_

After? That was everything that followed that call. The last time he had actually spoken to her - so certain it wasn't necessary as she finished visiting with her parents before coming home on a drive they had both made at minimum three times a year in the nearly just over three years they had lived together, and at least one time a year in the two and a half years before that, in every type of weather imaginable.  
  
Almost six years together and he could drive that route to her parents house in Boston with his eyes closed.

Joe slowly walked down the hall on the second level to their bedroom. To him, even after this much time alone it was still theirs. It would always be theirs.

Even if her parents had taken all of her things with them while he was barely able to string a sentence together – despite his own parents arguments against the action since, as his mother put it, it was “pillaging our son and daughter-in-law’s home.”  
  
Before was ridicule of his plans. Before was arguments about those plans not being a certain person’s business; since that same person didn’t consult anyone else on his own plans. Before was nieces’ births and younger brother’s weddings that all came and went without barely more than a half-hearted invitation from the brother in question – almost as if he had become an afterthought. Before was missed holiday’s because he was, apparently, the one who couldn’t ‘get over’ what happened, and avoidance meant less upset for his parents. Before was fights, he didn’t start, about how he was ‘wasting’ his career and how he had to ‘strike while the iron is hot’.  
  
Before had even dared to infringe on After on one solitary occasion. Flower arrangements, with generic sympathy cards, arrived in Boston – without his two former bandmates - his brothers or their wives arriving themselves.

He still wondered if their Mother got blood on her carpets when she inevitably attempted to murder them, as she said she had planned, for that Thanksgiving After. It had been a happy thought while he sat at their dining room table, in their house, and drank a bottle of whiskey for dinner.  
  
Joe walked into the bedroom and immediately crossed it to enter the huge attached bathroom. He snorted as he looked around, could still picture Annie’s face prior to the renovation of the room and practically hear her sweet voice floating around the room.

_“If you’re going to make me live in this giant house – you’re getting me a damned soaking tub that I could swim in if I wanted to.”_  
  
Before was three years ago when Joe had his first failed post-college audition. Before was the three years that followed filled with small off-Broadway supporting roles that never really went anywhere (despite critical support for his own acting), being offered (but not accepted) bad sitcom pilots, one critically revered independent film role that never got distributed and countless other failed attempts at breaking onto the Broadway stage – both as an actor and a writer.  
  
Before was all the people that couldn’t see past goofy Joe Jonas of the Jonas Brothers, couldn’t see the work he had put in to learn and get better, even four years after the final curtain came down.

Before was receiving the best piece of news he could expect for his career, for his first real role, in November of 2019 to open in August of 2020 for the new ‘season’ on Broadway. Before was being offered the role of Bertram Cates in a revival of ‘Inherit the Wind’ opposite Richard Dryfuss and Jonathan Pryce and directed by Casey Nicholaw.  
  
Then pre-production rehearsals were shut down due to a virus that hadn't seemed like anything at the time.

_“It’s going to be okay babe. They told you production’s shut down just for now. But the producers are very committed to putting this on. And you were the directors first choice. You. They called you. Mr. Nicholaw told you – he saw you at your senior showcase and had already been working on getting the funding to do this show. He wanted you then. That was two years ago! It’s going to be fine. I mean, seriously, do not worry. How long could this really last anyway?”_

After was being called on August 19th, two days after the most painful experience of his young life to date, to be informed by Casey that the production had been completely shut down. Even if they get permission to re-open the Theater District – the producers they had decided to pass on the show.  
  
The excuses they gave the director? – ‘It would be too heavy. People want happy subject matter. Musicals!’

He had laughed maniacally after getting off the phone when he realized he was more relieved than angry. He wouldn’t have to call them and quit afterall.

After was spending the next eight months writing frantically when he wasn’t drunk or sleeping or just missing days in general. After was constantly composing music and lyrics and story - for one single reason – Annie would have wanted him to. She had been his biggest cheerleader since the day they met and the one person he couldn’t bare to disappoint was her.

_“I don’t know why you keep writing, or auditioning for, this dour stuff babe. You’re funny and you’re musical. I know you studied directing to get away from some preconceived notion of, well, of you. But that doesn’t mean you can’t put what you learned into writing something that’s more…you-you. Stop only focusing on drama. Expand your horizons. Wanting to escape in the theater isn’t a bad thing.”_  
  
He finally opened the medicine cabinet and frowned as he considered his options for a moment. Anti-anxiety medication, sleeping medication, prescription pain killers, generic pain killers…before just grabbing the fairly large bottle of sleeping pills as it was the most full of all the bottles having sat untouched for the last six months as he focused all his energy on the play he had destroyed the night before. Setting the bottle on the counter Joe filled the bathroom cup with water and then unscrewed the top off the pill bottle. He shook a few of the small blue tablets into his hand and focused his gaze on them.

_“I miss you Joey,” Annie breathed into the phone. “I’m so sorry. I’m going to come home. Coming back here was stupid – we should have worked things out together in person.”_

_“You needed it,” he replied. “Hell, we both did. I think I would have killed even my Mom after four months of non-stop contact under the circumstances. And, listen about what you said before you left? I was a moron babe. We’ll get married next summer? Give the Mom’s time to plan? I know I’ve been putting it off – I just wanted your parents to finally see me as doing something instead of living off my teenage years. They hate it enough that I’m just an actor.”_

_“You are not ‘just’ anything Joseph Adam Jonas. You are the love of my life and the man I’m going to marry. You’re the father of my future children. You're the man who makes me laugh every day. You’re the man who could have rested on his laurels and rushed out a mediocre pop album just to stay famous. Instead you stepped away from it all. You went to college. You decided you were going to prove all the nay-sayers wrong. You honed your craft and found that not only do you genuinely love it – but that you’re damn good at it.”_

_“I love you so much,” Joe whispered back, smiling slightly._

_“I love you too,” she replied. “I’ll be home on the 13th. Just in time for your birthday baby. Like I’m gonna miss the big three-oh. But I gotta go now. My Mom’s hollering for dinner. Love you.”  
_  
With a final deep breath Joe tossed six of the pills into his mouth and swallowed a large mouthful of water. As he tossed his head back he felt the pills slide down his throat. Swallowing a few more times he picked up the bottle again and began shaking another six into his hand before repeating the process twice more. The non-existent weight of the pills began to feel heavy in his hand on his fifth dose and he set the bottle down carefully without moving his eyes from it.  
  
Clenching his fists Joe licked his lips and turned his gaze up to the mirror in front of him.  
  
Standing there was a still incredibly young, yet barely recognizable man. Short dark hair hung limply into dull brown eyes with dark circles surrounding them. Two dry lips were stretched thin across a gaunt face that was developing the slightest lines near the mouth and eyes to imply a past that at one time was filled with many smiles.  
  
”What am I doing?” he whispered and blinked in near-confusion over the reflection he was faced with.  
  
As that thought crossed his mind, his cell phone – sitting on the counter next to him – beeped.  
  
Shakily he tapped it and just saw on the screen a single text from his mother.  
  
His mother who, if she hadn’t been with him physically, had called him every single day of the last eight months. His mother that had been figuratively, if not literally, by his side near constantly since he had called her in shock on August 12th after he had gotten the news.

His mother who he feared would die right alongside him.  
  
Raising his empty right hand, up and away from the phone, he touched his ash-grey face and flinched at the contact with the now cold, clammy skin.  
  
A sudden tightening in his chest had the young man backing away quickly from the counter trying to push the sudden panic attack away before that caused him to pass out before the drugs did.  
  
Joe closed his eyes and quickly kneeled in front of, and then opened, the toilet seat. Leaning forward he jabbed two fingers down his throat and forced the already swallowed pills out of his body, repeatedly, until he could see what he thought was all of them in the bowl. Pushing back into a seated position on the floor Joe caught his breath and wiped at his wet eyes with his clean hand. He stood up on shaking legs and slowly went about washing his trembling hands and brushing his teeth before methodically cleaning the evidence and tossing the bottle into the garbage.

Turning away, he grabbed his cell phone before he walked out of the bathroom and took a seat on his side of the king-sized bed that dominated the master bedroom. He gently reached out and touched the single item on his nightstand – a solitaire diamond ring.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered out loud. “I just miss you so much.”

He immediately swiped his phone open and dialed the first three digits he could think of at that moment, still in a daze of near panic and heightened anxiety, and waited as it rang only twice before a calm voice spoke.  
  
”911, what is your emergency?”  
  
”I’m afraid I’m going to kill myself,” Joe Jonas replied lifelessly to the woman and shut his eyes to listen to her immediate instructions.


	2. Chapter Two: Fragile Existence

* * *

_Thursday February 11th 2021  
  
_

“Good morning Abigail. How are we doing today?” a bright, overly cheerful, voice interrupted the brunette’s contemplation of the contents of her breakfast tray. Slowly she looked up and raised an eyebrow in question at the doctor that had entered the room; suppressing a laugh as she took in her appearance.

“I regularly wonder how anyone takes you seriously here,” Abbie replied, avoiding the question she had been asked.

“I have no idea what you mean,” the blonde doctor joked back. “I am obviously a strait laced, well trained, medical professional,” she added, pulling up a chair next to the bed and taking a seat in it.

“Oh obviously,” the brunette, sitting in her hospital bed responded, nodding slightly. “In a maxi-dress and Birkenstocks…in February.”

“They’re just grateful I wear any shoes at all,” was the only response Abigail got to that comment. “So, seriously, how are you today? Judging by the amount of food in front of you, an hour after breakfast was delivered, I’m going to guess that the answer is not so great.”

Abbie sighed and poked at the rubbery ‘healthy egg and veg’ scramble – as the hospital menu called it – sitting in front of her again before replying with a simple, “I ate the applesauce and the fruit salad Mel.”

“Abbie,” the doctor, Melissa Parson, sighed and ran a hand through her blonde hair in frustration. “That’s not going to cut it. You aren’t gaining weight as quick as we’d like.”

“The foods gross,” Abbie finally snapped back, growing angry at the woman who had been treating her the last few months. “I can’t eat it.”

“It’s not gross Abbie. It’s perfectly balanced to meet your current nutritional requirements.”

Abbie rolled her eyes hard at that and shook her head, “I mean it tastes gross. And if you want me to put on weight – send someone to McDonalds and get me a breakfast sandwich or something.”

Melissa responded quickly, giving the brunette a serious look, “You know you can’t eat anything like that yet.”

“You’re the one that wants me to put weight on quicker.”

“I want you to put weight on healthily. Eating crap is going to rebound on your body. You aren’t a kid anymore – and those doctors never should have just thrown fatty foods at you for the sake of putting some weight on as fast as possible back then either. You physically can’t bounce back like a teenager would. That’s just a simple fact of basic biology.”

Abbie groaned and flopped back into her pillow, pushing the tray away in frustration, “They’re really disgusting Mel. They don’t even try and make them taste like eggs. I’ve eaten tofu scrambles – those aren’t gross. Whatever this is – this is gross.”

There was silence following the statement until Melissa’s voice calmly, but sternly, broke it, “Do you want to go back on a feeding tube? Or go through another cycle of dialysis?” Abbie wrinkled her nose in disgust and shook her head violently. “Then eat the hospital crap,” she added, reaching out and handing the brunette her fork from the tray again.

The two sat in silence for the next five minutes as Abbie violently stabbed her ‘eggs’ and glared at the tray, shoveling the small portion of, now cold, mix of tofu, half an egg white and mixed vegetables into her mouth in as few bites as possible – Melissa occasionally breaking in to chide her to try chewing the food while she was at it. When Abbie finally swallowed the last mouthful, she sat back again in the bed and began sipping at the cranberry juice that had been on the tray.

“I don’t suppose there’s a chance in hell I can get a cup of coffee or an orange juice is there?” she asked, fairly snidely – even if she felt marginally bad about the tone. She actually liked the doctor; especially compared to some she’d had in the past. She was the only doctor that hadn’t taken one look at her last name – the family name – and done whatever she’d asked simply because of the amount of money in their bank account.

“With the ulcer you managed to give yourself this time? Yea, I don’t think so,” Melissa responded, actually laughing, tapping her fingers along the back of the tablet she was holding. “Anyway, now that you’ve eaten. Let’s get down to business.”

“Goodie,” Abbie grumbled, dropping her head back and closing her eyes. “Hit me with your worst doc.”

The blonde’s eyes trailed along the fame of the younger woman with a tired sigh – taking in the deep set circles under her eyes and stark cheekbones – and not for the first time was almost grateful that Abigail Nolan was on the short side. Any taller and she’d be looking at another three or more months in the hospital – if she was looking at anything at all.

“It’s not bad news,” Melissa assured her. “I got your morning labs and vitals as soon as I got in this morning,” she added.

“Like I said - do your worst,” Abbie groaned, covering her face. Every morning for the last two months she had heard the same spiel (the three months prior to that there was less talking about tests and more performing them with minimal discussion ) – creatinine and potassium - still too high, hemoglobin - too low, but not dangerously so; and, still positive for anti-bodies to H. pylori bacteria (despite the low dose anti-biotics she’d been getting through an IV on and off for weeks).

Then her vitals would come – blood pressure too high, temperature hovering between 99.5 and 100.5 depending on the time of day. If they heard crackles in her lungs? That started a whole new round of tests to make sure she wasn’t backing up fluid into her lungs – an indication that her kidneys were failing again, or just for some new fun, she was going to congestive heart failure.

Just the typical results of having gone through re-feeding syndrome for three months.

“You’re always so pessimistic,” Melissa responded and tapped her tablet to once more glance over the labs. “I told you it isn’t bad news. I mean, it’s not great news, but it’s not bad either. Your creatinine has come down to 1.86. Your potassium dropped to a 4.42 – that one’s technically in the normal range, but the high end of it. I’d like both to be lower – but they’ve been in a slow and steady decline, so that’s positive.”

“Very slow,” Abbie grumbled.

“Could be trending the other way you know. Yet another reason to eat the gross food we make you. In the specific amounts we make it for you.”

“I know alright. A banana or a grain of salt could kill me right now. I’ve heard it before,” the brunette grumbled, actually pouting, and staring at her hands in her lap. “Continue.”

Melissa shook her head and glanced back at the tablet, “Your hemoglobin is actually up. Which is a good indicator.”

Abbie’s looked away from her hands at that statement and couldn’t help asking, “How much up is up? Normal?”

“Unfortunately, not,” Melissa admitted. “It’s at an 11. But considering yesterday I was thinking we’d be looking at a transfusion this afternoon? This is good news.”

“I guess,” Abigail admitted with a shrug. “What else?”

“Anti-bodies for bacteria have decreased in volume thankfully. I want you off that anti-biotic. We don’t need to create more problems. This course might have put a dent in it enough to get ahead and let your immune system do the rest of the work.”

“Yes, cause my bleeding ulcer that has been slowly cause me to hemorrhage is suddenly going to resolve itself like magic out of the blue. The gastro guy said that isn’t possible. And he also said he can’t just go in and quickly seal it off yet cause I’m not strong enough for surgery,” Abbie muttered and shocked herself when she stuck her tongue out in the direction of the blonde woman.

Melissa raised an eyebrow in warning at Abigail’s actions and replied, “If you’re going to act like my toddler, I’m going to treat you like one. Are you done?”

“Sorry,” Abbie replied sheepishly. “I’m just…I am done Melissa. I want to go home.”

Melissa carefully placed her tablet on the end of Abbie’s bed and looked at the woman sitting across from her seriously, weighing her words carefully. She might not know the brunette as well as some others at the hospital, her husband for one, but she did know her enough to know that one thing Abbie hated was dancing around a subject. So, with the spirit of that in mind she just said bluntly, “Abbie…five months ago I was expecting you to die. What was worse? I was expecting to have to call my husband and tell him that you were dead.”

“Excuse me?” Abbie squeaked; she knew she had been sick – she wasn’t stupid. But that time period was a bit of a blur to the younger woman, so she was fairly shocked by that statement.

“Five months ago I got called down to the Emergency Room by a Resident because his Attending was getting coffee and he had no idea how bad off you were. I walked in and there was this emaciated girl on a stretcher – that looked vaguely familiar. I pushed that thought away because it didn’t matter right then. Instead, I treated you and when I got your labs and CTs back? Well there was a debate whether we should admit you here or life-flight you to Manhattan.”

“Manhattan’s only a half hour drive away,” Abbie responded looking confused.

“Exactly. A thirty-minute drive and we were contemplating a life-flight. I looked at you and I looked at the information the ER had put together in their examination – and I thought you were going to die. But I also thought it wouldn’t matter if you were here or in the main hospital – so I took a chance and admitted you here.”

_“What have we got?” a tired looking blonde woman rushed off the elevator having received a 9-1-1 page down to the ER. As the Attending on duty for the Medical floors she was required to approve all admissions – but that didn’t usually include emergency pages downstairs. She hadn’t heard of any incoming mass-casualty traumas that would have required, literally if she was being called too, all hands on deck._

_“Twenty-eight year old female. 5 foot 3 inches. Severely malnourished – bed scale places weight at approximately sixty-three pounds. Seizure en route – paramedics stated that vomit included visible blood. Blood pressure is one-sixty-five over one-oh-five. Temp is one-oh-two point eight,” the ER resident rattled off, sounding nervous, and Melissa blinked looking at the stretcher – a rock in her gut at the sight – and then around the large room for a Emergency Attending._

_“Where’s your attending?” she finally just asked, holding a hand out to grab the tablet with the patient’s information on it – eyes scanning down the line of labs that had been ordered, studiously ignoring the name on the chart. “And when did she get here?”_

_“Twenty minutes ago – just got her somewhat stable. And Doctor Reynolds went to get coffee across the street. It’s Sunday. It’s never busy Sunday.”_

_“Well it’s busy now,” Melissa snapped back and internally groaned; she hadn’t done trauma since med school. “Now, was she vomiting blood or was there just some visible blood?” the blonde questioned, watching two nurses continued to work on the patient – on Abbie Nolan, Ray’s long time patient – a third stepping out after getting the woman into a clean gown– one was still hooking the young woman up to monitors and another was standing there nervously holding a skeletal like arm and glancing back and forth between the arm and a needle._

_“Doctor?” the same nurse interjected. “Did you want an IV started?”_

_Melissa shook her head, “No. Not yet. I want her labs to come back first. Her levels of, well, everything are probably a mess. I don’t want to flood her system. Did the tubes go down yet?”_

_“Um,” the resident looked uncomfortable and Abbie followed his gaze to the arm the nurse was not holding, blinking at the mess the left arm was. “We weren’t able to get a good stick. I called down to the lab for a phlebotomist. Her skin’s like paper.”_

_“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Melissa snapped and grabbed a pair of gloves from the box on the wall, sticking her hands in them and ripping open a new butterfly needle. “I’ll draw the rainbow you asked for myself,” she added, nodding at the nurse to pass her the tubes as they went. “But I’m adding H. pylori antibody tests to the mix,” she said louder watching as the second nurse began making notes as Melissa spoke._

_“You think she has an ulcer?” the resident asked in confusion._

_“You think she doesn’t?” Melissa questioned back in a tone that reminded him that she might be an Internist but she was still years ahead of him. “Peptic Ulcer – common complication from anorexia nervosa. No food in the stomach but the stomach still produces acid. What’s left for the acid to eat but the stomach lining? She wasn’t vomiting blood – there was just trace amounts. And with that temp? She’s bordering on septic. Peptic. Ulcer.”_

_“No one said she was anorexic. I thought, maybe, umm…,” the resident, who Melissa decided with that sentence not to bother learning his name, trailed off – his eyes glancing at the arm Melissa was still working on._

_“Well, sixty-five pounds with a starvation belly? Are you a resident or a med student?,” Melissa questioned, seriously asking. “She’s either incredibly ill or incredibly ill,” Melissa told him rolling her eyes. “But she’s not an addict. And don’t try and tell me you weren’t thinking that. Because if you weren’t I wouldn’t have been called from downstairs almost twenty minutes after she got here – your Attending would have been and it would have been immediately.”_

_Melissa finished drawing the tubes of blood, just as the phlebotomist arrived. She simply handed the tubes to back to them and signed off the test orders – sending them down via computer as well as handing a paper copy._

_“Now, I want her sent down to radiology stat while we wait on the labs to come back – get me a full abdominal CT and, for safety sake, from the seizure, a neuro CT as well.”_

_Melissa watched not five minutes later as an orderly wheeled the bed the young woman was on out of the curtain area and headed towards the elevator banks down the hall._

_“Now what?” the resident asked her and Melissa rolled her eyes._

_“Now we wait,” she replied and then glanced at her watch then pulling out her cell-phone. “Don’t you have other patients to see?”_

“Your CT showed a two-inch long, five-millimeter-deep tear in your stomach lining and a second three inch long, 3 millimeter deep tear in your intestinal lining. You got lucky that neither perforated. You’d have been dead simply from sepsis on its own – probably before your Aunt and Uncle found you. Your temperature was almost 103 degrees. You had a seizure in the ambulance. Your blood pressure made me scared you were going to have a heart attack before I could get anything else sorted out. That’s before we factored in the complications from the simple fact that you were the weight as my five-year-old son.”

Abbie grimaced and reached up unconsciously and began twirling her long hair around her finger, contemplating Melissa’s words, and the whole truth about the condition she had been on admittance. She knew her Aunt and Uncle had been asking the doctors to downplay it to her– at least until she was more stable – in deference to her mental health.

She just hadn’t realized quite how bad it had been.

“So, I’m going to choose to look at the positives here,” Melissa continued, eying Abbie carefully to make sure she was being heard. “Your blood pressure has been stable for the last two weeks. Your cardiac enzymes have fluctuated since your admission but have never been out of a normal range. Your temperature has been going up at night – but not dangerously high – and it was normal all-night last night for the first time since you got here. Your kidney functions are slowly but surely coming down into a healthy range – which means you shouldn’t have to have another round of dialysis. Liver’s been fine since you got here and it’s stayed fine. The fluid buildup in your lungs never got the point that we were worried about anything other than potentially pneumonia and that too has been slowly resolving itself. These are all good things Abbie. What have I told you repeatedly?”

“I want to be the tortoise not the hare,” Abbie whispered, wiping discretely at her eyes. “Causing the damage quick is easy – but the quicker you damage it the longer it will take to heal. Don’t want to shock my system anymore than it already is.”

“Exactly,” Melissa agreed, nodding. “Now, more good news. Since you’re, finally, over eighty-pounds we can do the endoscopy and the colonoscopy and cauterize the two ulcers.”

“…that’s good news?” Abbie asked, wincing at the very thought of the two procedures.

“You’ll be asleep,” Melissa assured her. “And yes, it is good news. Once those are cauterized, you’ll find eating a lot easier. It might even start tasting normal again without the acid burning the back of your throat.”

“Somehow I doubt anything I eat here is ever going to taste normal.”

“You never know. But seriously – with the ulcers cauterized you will find it easier to eat. You won’t fill up as quickly and you won’t get stomachaches immediately afterward. It’ll help push us over the edge on the last eight pounds you need before you can be discharged too.”

“Thank God,” Abbie cried out loud. “I get to go home. Finally.”

Melissa nodded, smiling tightly, but not answering. Explaining the rest of the situation – what happened after Abigail Nolan was discharged from the medical service – was her husband’s department. And not for a few weeks yet – the last thing anyone needed was Abbie figuring out a way to bolt.

* * *

_Thursday March 11th 2021  
  
_

“Hey Kid,” a rough Irish brogue broken through the haze Abbie had fallen into as she sat in an uncomfortable armchair in her hospital room. “Abigail?”

“Hey Ray,” she replied, sounding exhausted. “Morning; I suppose.”

“Afternoon actually,” he corrected gently, dragging another chair over to the small table and sitting down in it. “You sound tired.”

Abbie snorted and shook her head, “In the real world that’s what someone says when they’re being polite, and you actually look like shit.”

“Yea but you know me. I’d just tell you that.”

Abbie sighed and turned her gaze, from where it had been blindly looking out the window, to the dark-haired man sitting across the table from her. The man in question embodied the expression – tall, dark and handsome. He was funny, charming, Irish. He also looked like he belonged in front of a microphone with a guitar rather than in a hospital; complete with jeans, a Thin Lizzy t-shirt, leather wrist band and a comfortable cardigan in lieu of a lab coat.

When Abbie was seventeen Doctor Raymond Parson had been, frankly, one of the most attractive men Abigail Nolan had ever seen – celebrities included in that – and now it was like looking at a piece of wet cardboard whenever she saw him. Not that she was surprised – she hadn’t been attracted to someone, even in passing, in years.

“Yea, Doc. I guess you would,” Abbie agreed with a frown. “What’s the news? You’ve got your broody face on.”

“I’ve got something to talk to you about,” he agreed and a deep breath. “Now, Mel got to telling me that she discussed potential discharge with you a few weeks ago.”

“Yes…and then she told me that if I got over ninety that I wouldn’t have to stay here anymore,” Abbie agreed, glaring at him to dare something different to come out of his mouth.

“Aye,” he nodded. “There’s truth to that there is.”

“Oh boy,” Abbie interrupted. “You’re slipping into Irish vernacular and you’ve got your ‘but’ face on. That’s worse than the broody one. Never good for me – means you’re nervous about something.”

“Aye,” he continued as though she hadn’t spoken. “You can leave here. Meaning, you can leave New York Presbyterian – Lawrence. You can’t leave doctor supervision yet.”

Abbie froze for a second and then dropped her head back into the armchair before admitting quietly, “I figured. I guess I just hoped that maybe…I mean outpatient?”

She saw Ray lean slightly closer, arms resting on the table and staring at her intently, “I know you hoped for something else. But the fact of it Abbie? You aren’t ready to go home. You being by yourself right now is a very bad idea.”

“But, I live with my Aunt and Uncle. It’s not like I’ll be totally alone,” Abbie tried to insist; even if she knew it was a waste of time. Then something occurred to her. “Wait a minute, you can’t commit me without my say so or a court order. I’m well over eighteen.”

“Or if you present a clear and present danger to yourself or others,” Ray corrected. “You clearly present a danger to yourself. Also, you signed conservatorship over to your Uncle and Aunt years ago; so, that was the weakest argument you’ve thrown at me in almost ten years.”

“I know,” she grumbled and turned her gaze back to the window – noticing an ambulance come flying into the sunny parking lot downstairs. “I had to try.”

Ray chuckled, “I get it. But, listen – seriously – you can get out of here. That’s at least a bonus. Get to be outside, a real bed, your computer? I’m thinking Monday…maybe Tuesday at the latest depending on bed availability.”

“That’s good. It’ll be nice to see everyone again,” she responded, standing up a bit to try and see something from the third-floor window she was sitting at. All she could make out was what she thought was a male body on a stretcher – but no one was acting like it was a dire emergency. “Think that guy’s dead?” she suddenly asked pointing down – now standing fully and leaning on the window looking down.

“Huh?” Ray replied, dumbly. “What? Abbie sit down,” he added in exasperation.

“Fine. Ruin my one form of entertainment,” she snapped back and curled up in the chair.

“As to seeing everyone,” Ray continued, as though Abbie hadn’t just been contemplating something as morbid as someone being dead. “That’s part of what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“What? Did Mike and Andrea leave?” she questioned, referring to a married nurse and a P.A. respectively that had just started working at Four Winds when she was a teenager and hadn’t left yet.

“No. The staff’s still the same as always; maybe one or two new faces,” Ray replied. “It’s just…I talked to your Aunt and Uncle. And your Uncle thinks, maybe, going to the NYP-Westchester facility might be a better idea. But he did say it was up to you – I’m just supposed to try and convince you towards that one.”

Abbie rolled her eyes where Ray couldn’t see at that statement before carefully replying, “I adore my Uncle. But he’s also barely ten years older than me and is an accountant – an accomplished one sure, but still an accountant. He’s not a doctor. He doesn’t get to make those choices. The conservatorship is in name only, that’s what we all agreed upon when it was set up. It’s to keep my parent’s from being able to swan in with some judge Dad’s got in his pocket in order to lock me away in some out of state hole to save them from any embarrassment I could cause the family name.”

“So, you want to go back to Four Winds?” Ray reiterated, for official clarification.

“Yes,” Abbie said assuredly. “If I’m not going home – well, then, I might as well go to the next closest thing. So, Monday or Tuesday?”

“Since you picked Four Winds? Monday,” he clarified.

“Like I was actually going to pick somewhere else? Hell – ignoring everything else? Four Winds is closer to James and Cate’s anyway. More importantly, last time I checked you didn’t work at the Westchester facility – unless that’s changed too?” she commented.

“I do have privileges there now,” he admitted. “But I’m not officially on staff full-time like I am here or at Four Winds.”

“Then it’s not even an option. I broke you in years ago and I don’t have the energy to do another Doc,” she stated firmly and Ray laughed slightly with a soft, distinctly paternal, smile directed at the brunette.

Abbie had been Ray Parson’s patient since a year after finishing his dual-fellowships. He was a new attending and she had become been his prized shining example of why he had chosen his specialties – youth and adolescent psychiatry, as well as, addiction psychiatry.

To say they hadn’t clicked immediately would be an understatement. He had his bright, shiny new lab coat and an anorexic teenager to treat. That was the simplest math the newly certified psychiatrist could imagine.  
  
All through residency he had heard the same thing from patients, “I’m not anorexic. I just don’t have a big appetite.” And, despite what his subconscious was telling him – every time Abbie told him that she wasn’t anorexic. Every time she told him she actually loved food – that the food wasn’t the problem– he blew it off. He just needed to get through the young teenager that she was beautiful and smart and wasn’t fat no matter what he brain told her. Get through to her that she didn’t need to lie about it or be ashamed of it.

In fact, it took Melissa visiting him at work for lunch, and running into Abbie in the lunchroom, that clued him into the fact that he might be missing something and that his patient might be telling the truth. He had treated many anorexic patients over the years of his residency – not one of them had willingly sat down and had an in-depth discussion about food. In depth discussions about the number of calories in various foods – yes. Trading recipes for various chocolate cakes and discussing tastes and textures because she actually eats them? Not in his experience.

After that it had been seven months of outpatient therapy at Four Winds in the young adult program; but, they had done it – they had figured out exactly how to, not fix, but manage and maintain Abbie’s issues.

And for the next five years he only saw her when she was home from school – for quick maintenance sessions. Or a email exchanges - just to keep her head on straight while in college when she got stressed – usually during exam time.

She had quickly, during those initial seven months of full-time treatment, become someone he cared about more then he should have; and maintaining a professional distance, once they broke through and got to the underlying issues – specifically her parents and their complete disregard for anything she may want – he stopped fighting it. He wasn’t quite twenty-years older than her – but sometimes she seemed so much younger then she actually was that it felt like he was decades older and he couldn’t help wishing that there had been more he could have done for her beyond the realm of the hospital setting.

He still remembered what Melissa had said, only half-joking, to him about four months into Abbie’s initial time with him as a patient, “Sweetheart, she just turned eighteen. She’s an adult now…sort-of. You can’t actually adopt her.”

Then a few years later had come the relief; he had thought he could finally relax about Abbie when she sent him a selfie of herself, before her boyfriend’s fraternity formal in her junior year of college, and happily told him her dress was a size nine.

He thought he could relax about Abbie right up until that December – just past six years ago now.

His pager going off in his pocket interrupted his musings, while studying Abbie’s still distracted face – looking for insight since she had agreed far too quickly for his peace of mind. He knew her too well to think she was thrilled about this. Frowning he pulled it out of his pocket and was surprised by the fact that it said 9-1-1 ER – with no actual full psychiatric unit in this hospital emergent psych cases don’t usually come directly here. “Abbie? I’ve gotta go it seems.”

“Everything alright?” she questioned, sounding distracted again and almost asking out of habit.

“Yes, it’s downstairs,” he assured her. “I’ll stop by and see you before I head out for the day.”

“You don’t have to do that,” she assured him, still not really looking directly at him. “Jamie and Cate are stopping by this evening. I’ll be fine. I promise.”

Ray just nodded, “Alright. I’ll see you in the afternoon tomorrow then?”

“You know where to find me,” she reminded him, smiling wryly and then turning her gaze back out the window.

Ray merely ran a hand through his hair and watched her for one more moment before leaving. He passed his wife in the hallway just before he reached the elevators and grabbed her elbow as he hit the down button, “I got a page to the ER in the middle of my session with Abbie. I only got through moving to Four Winds on Monday – we didn’t actually get to discuss anything. You mind?”

“I’ll go sit with her for a bit and chat. I’ll give you a head’s up if anything’s weird. Or well, weirder then Abbie can sometimes be. Any idea what’s wrong? She had to know she wasn’t going home right away. No matter how she tried to act.”

Ray squeezed his eyes shut and reached down to grab his wife’s hand before squeezing that tightly, “Jason’s birthday is the 24th. There’s a reason I pushed you to get her out of her this week – even if you wanted to wait another one. I want her where I can keep a closer eye on her as soon as possible for as long as possible before that day.”

Melissa only nodded and squeezed his hand back at that revelation; then let go so he could get on the elevator. She immediately turned and walked back towards where he had come from; hurrying her steps slightly as she passed the nurses station just around the corner from Abbie’s room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there we have Abbie's entrance to the story. We'll be back to Joe next time.
> 
> Please review if you're enjoying this - it gives me motivation that I'm not just throwing things out in the world for no reason at all.  
> Thanks.


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